In this nice cartoon, Sarah Glidden looks at all the ways that people in different cultures greet each other, from the handshake to the hug to the kiss on the cheek or to the kisses on both cheeks to the namaste sign and so on, and the awkwardness that can arise when one person expects one thing and the other expects something else.
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At yesterday’s official campaign launch, there was a large crowd of thousands as Bernie Sanders called for a ‘revolution’ and hammered away at the issue of how the wealthy are vacuuming up all the wealth. You can see the crowd that gathered and can see his speech below.
I was of course pleased that the Irish voted in favor of same-sex marriage and delighted that the margin of victory (62% in favor) was so large. The fact that a country that is so closely identified with Catholicism gave such a strong affirmation that all people should be treated equally regardless of their sexual orientation has sent shock waves through not only the Catholic establishment but through much of the anti-gay world.
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I usually don’t watch the presidential primary debates, seeing them as a waste of time. But this time, I may watch some, especially the early ones, because they promise to be quite entertaining. I wrote before about the problem that the Republican party is having because the large numbers of declared and undeclared candidates (with estimated numbers running as high as 20) makes it logistically difficult to hold debates.
I recently saw the film version of John Le Carre’s classic cold war spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. Here’s the trailer:
Yes, I know that he already had said that he was running for the presidential nomination but in the strange way that American elections are run and dragged out for so long, it makes sense to get the most publicity by first saying you are interested in running, then setting up exploratory committees, then letting it be known that you are definitely running, and then formally kicking off the campaign. In Sander’s case, that last step will be taken today at 5:00 pm in his home town of Burlington, Vermont, where he was first elected to office as mayor.
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You may have been following the intricate and arcane maneuvering in the US senate where the fate of key data gathering provisions of the USA Patriot Act are due to expire on June 1 unless Congress takes action before then. Dan Froomkin gives us the current state of play on the debate over the NSA’s blanket collection of data. Froomkin says that currently there are just two options available:
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As the presidential campaign picks up steam (even though the actual date is still 18 months away!), the merits of the Iraq war are being debated once again as the chaos in the region and the rise of groups like ISIS has made even many people on the conservative end of the political spectrum begin to wonder if that fateful decision to invade Iraq has not resulted in creating a much worse situation. Everyone is eager to avoid blame for the debacle that has pretty much destroyed a once modern nation.
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I am way out of touch with popular culture and so I had never heard of John Legend before the Oscars this year when the news reported that he and Common (another performer whom I had never heard of until recently) had given a boffo live performance of the song Glory from the film Selma during the Academy Awards show, where it won an award and where the two gave great acceptance speeches.
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The police would have you believe that theirs is the most dangerous job and that is why they need to be given the freedom to shoot people at will but actually, as the chart in this article shows, it is nowhere close to being the most dangerous job. Neither are firefighters and security guards.
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